Test Site Last Updated August 2025 Once a website is in production (ie. published or “Live“) and being visited by the public we are still making changes or adding functionality. So that we can try out new things without interrupting the visitors to the Live site we have a “Test”. (Sometimes we may have even more versions of the site. Depending on the perceived purpose of these extra versions they may be called “the Dev site,” “Staging” ,”Qual” or “Multidev”) How the Test site is different from the Live: The “root” part of the URL address. It is not findable on search engines. It is manually re-synched to the Live site on a regular basis. To make the Test site mirror the Live site we “synch” it up. In other words, we manually override the Test site with the content, database, and code from the Live site, usually when we’re getting ready to work on a code release. If it hasn’t been synched up recently then newer pages and images may be missing. To access the Test site: The path to your test site is https://test-cofa-*.pantheonsite.io/ where the * is your CSU acronym (e.g. “tad” for Theatre and Dance or “aah” for Art & Art History, etc.). The part of the URL after this root part is the same as the Live site. For example, the path to log in is the same as it is on your Live site. Just add /saml/login to the end). All other paths after the root are the same. The only differences would be if new or edited content was on the Live site that has not been synched to the Test site yet. Why might you want to use the Test site? Generally, the COFA Web team will ask you to review and approve new functionality on the Test site before we move it to the Live site. Note that before moving our code edits to the Test site, the Developers generally perform the edits on a “Local” version of the site, which is usually on their individual laptop computers. You are encouraged to use the Test site as a sandbox. Try out new content, menu organizations, complex layouts or other features on the Test site. However, before doing so be aware that the next time the Test site is synched with the Live site your edits will be lost. Please just let us know if you have anything in progress on the Test site that you do not want to lose. The Test site may also be useful if something was accidentally deleted from your Live site. Deleting is immediate and permanent so you will have to recreate it. If it’s on the Test site, you can copy it. If not, we can maybe capture it from the Web team’s Local versions or from an archive or backup of the site. Learn More More than you want to know about Web Deployment Environments and Best Practices from Beanstalk Guides.
